Children Of Divorce

The effects of divorce on children are far more devastating and long- lasting than researchers previously thought, according to new studies. Yet the findings show that it is not the divorce itself that matters, but how the parents handle the separation and then whether the child is able to develop meaningful relationships with both parents.Twelve million children under 18 now reside in homes marked by divorce. Researchers have found that these descendants of divorce have lower academic scores, problem friendships and emotional turmoil years, perhaps decades, beyond the initial parental separation.

Brook Lane is sponsoring "Legal and Ethical Issues: Treating Children of Divorce: Custody and Visitation Challenges" seminar. The seminar will be held on two dates, Friday, Sept. 7, and Friday, Sept. 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. at Brook Lane's main campus, 13218 Brook Lane Drive, Hagerstown. Custody and visitation decisions made by parents and the courts are critical to the well-being and effective treatment of children of separated and divorced parents. Mental health professionals are frequently called upon to participate in these decisions, which often present ethical challenges.

Not long ago, I asked a young friend of mine what he and his new girlfriend had in common. Well, he said, first of all, we both come from divorced families.The answer surprised me. This 20-year-old, with two sets of parents and step-parents, still identified himself primarily as the child of a divorce 12 years ago.More to the point, it was not ethnic, religious, geographic or class background - let alone taste in music or majors - that gave this pair an instant familiarity. It was their shared emotional background.

When Rebecca and Robert Blanche married nine years ago, they lived in a narrow three-bedroom house in Baton Rouge, La. There was plenty of space for the two of them and his four children from a previous marriage, who visited every other week. But when his children started to live there most of the time, and the Blanches had a baby in 2000, things got a little crowded. "We were always in each other's faces," says Rebecca Blanche, a registered nurse who owns a yoga studio. The baby slept in an upstairs kitchen, Robert Blanche's daughter had her own room, and his three sons slept in a room with a bunk bed that had a full-size bed on the bottom and a twin bed on top. "I'd wake up every morning, and no one was where I'd left them, and someone was always on the couch," she says.

Thousands of divorcing parents with young children in Volusia County will have to pay for a guidance program scheduled to begin in June.The domestic relations judges of the 7th Judicial Circuit, upset by the emotional damage children suffer in divorces, decided to start the program.Fees paid by the parents will cover the costs for the two-hour Children First program, which will be administered by the Mental Health Association of Volusia County.Divorcing parents will be required to see a videotape that dramatizes common divorce situations, then have follow-up discussions with a trained professional, said Dr. Dotti Lewis, president of the Mental Health Association.

Fourteen-year-old Clayton Giles sat on the courthouse steps Friday in Calgary, Alberta, and ate a slice of pizza, thus ending a 19-day hunger strike designed to draw attention to children of divorce who feel victimized by an insensitive family-court system. The Canadian boy's strike drew international attention and plenty of criticism from adults concerned that he was being used as much by immature adults (his parents) as he was victimized by unsatisfactory court orders. There are reasonable arguments to be made on both fronts.

Despite years of practice at divorce, we still don't do it very well. As the latest research shows, too many parents behave badly out of immaturity, mental illness or meanness. They force their children to take sides, to witness hostility and even violence, to carry messages, to spy, to accept their parents' new love interests too soon.Too often custodial mothers use a father's visitation rights as an opportunity for revenge; and too often visiting fathers fail to show up, fail to call, fail to pay child support.

IN RESPONSE to Myriam Marquez's Jan. 10 column about the effects on children reared in troubled households, I wanted to share with her that there is a body of research on this subject. Most information commonly known deals with negative implications of divorce, but several researchers have found contradictory results. Bugenthal and Hayley, namely, have revealed that there exists greater rates of deviance in children whose parents stayed together despite conflict.It is interesting that the ''studies'' that seem to be the most popularly read or heard about from magazines or television shows previously have focused on the detrimental effects of divorce, not the effects of parents staying together.

As a divorced father, I would like to thank Kathleen Parker for her Wednesday column, "Undoing the damage of male-bashing, one daughter at a time." Hopefully, not only will Parker's column begin to open minds about the critical role that fathers play in their children's lives, but also increase recognition that many of the messages children of divorce receive about their fathers -- especially from their divorced mothers -- not only are untrue but are...

In response to Thursday's letter to the editor "No-win for DCF," I say the Department of Children & Families needs to be held to the highest standards. If they can't do a better job in all areas of protecting children, they don't deserve their jobs. DCF is good at moving bad employees around, demoting or firing its employees, but it is time to see changes in procedures that will ensure the safety of all children. This should include children of divorce. It should never be the attitude of DCF that it is only a custody issue so those children don't deserve their resources to investigate abuse issues.

In the recent film The Squid and the Whale, the Berkmans announce their breakup to their 16- and 12-year-old sons and proceed to put them in the middle of their fight. The dad tells the kids that their mother is to blame and confides to the older son that she has cheated. The mother asks the younger boy to keep secrets from the father and soon starts dating the children's tennis instructor. The scenes draw audible gasps from the audience. In the decades since the divorce boom of the 1960s and '70s, and even since the mid-'80s, when the film takes place, many divorcing parents have struggled to avoid such disastrous events; the trend has been toward agreeing to agree early in the divorce for the sake of the children.

As a divorced father, I would like to thank Kathleen Parker for her Wednesday column, "Undoing the damage of male-bashing, one daughter at a time." Hopefully, not only will Parker's column begin to open minds about the critical role that fathers play in their children's lives, but also increase recognition that many of the messages children of divorce receive about their fathers -- especially from their divorced mothers -- not only are untrue but are...

By Michelle Koidin Jaffee, San Antonio Express-News, September 4, 2004

Back when the divorce rate took off in the 1970s, no one seemed to give much thought to any long-term effect on children. These days, experts are cranking out studies that alternately portray now-adult children of divorce as continuing to suffer negative effects or debunk that notion as embellished. The latest study falls into the second category, with University of Southern California sociologist Constance Ahrons saying most don't experience lasting troublesome effects. In turn, criticism is coming from those who have reached different conclusions.

Be courteous. The Boy Scouts are all over this one, and rightly so. "When you're setting up rules, think in terms of mutual courtesy," says Gary Direnfeld, a social worker, family life consultant and author from Ontario, Canada. "Kids respond to courtesy just as we do; it's respectful to think in terms of mutual courtesies." Parents who scream and yell are neither courteous nor effective, says pediatrician and child development columnist Marilyn Heins. "The louder you talk and the more words you use, the more kids will tune you out."

In response to Thursday's letter to the editor "No-win for DCF," I say the Department of Children & Families needs to be held to the highest standards. If they can't do a better job in all areas of protecting children, they don't deserve their jobs. DCF is good at moving bad employees around, demoting or firing its employees, but it is time to see changes in procedures that will ensure the safety of all children. This should include children of divorce. It should never be the attitude of DCF that it is only a custody issue so those children don't deserve their resources to investigate abuse issues.

This just in: Children of divorce do better when both parents live in the same general vicinity. Stunning, I know. So go the findings of "new research" into divorce trends and their effects on children. When it takes "new research" to confirm the obvious, we might figure we've run out of things to explore. And yet, what's obvious apparently isn't so obvious anymore. What should be clear without succumbing to Freud's couch is that children need and deserve both parents, a mother and a father.

Everyone knows divorce leads to emotional and financial stress for the one-time spouses. Now, the first controlled study of its kind shows that divorce may also harm the children's physical health.In a 38-state study, Drs. John Guidubaldi of Kent State University and Helen Cleminshaw of the University of Akron surveyed the health status of 358 children from intact families, and 341 children of divorce. The post-divorce children had lower health ratings (their siblings and parents had low ratings, too)

One thing about being pope: You can call a spade a spade and not lose a wink over your popularity ratings. Thus, Pope John Paul II came right out and uttered the God's-awful truth: Divorce is a plague ripping apart modern society. He made these remarks at a Vatican magistrates meeting, during which he also urged lawyers and judges to become conscientious objectors to divorce by refusing to participate in them. John Paul acknowledged that his recommendation would be tough to follow -- judges can't really refuse to hear divorce cases -- but popes are idea guys.

After a year of examining the best way to promote closer bonds between fathers and their children, a state panel has come up with one overwhelming idea: Keep those dads married. Florida's Commission on Responsible Fatherhood, hatched in 1995 at the behest of then-Gov. Lawton Chiles, unveiled a set of recommendations Wednesday at its annual symposium. Members hope that their ideas -- all of them centered on preserving marriages -- will become part of state law. Commissioners said they want to be careful not to force people to stay in truly bad marriages, especially those in which emotional or physical abuse is present.